It couldn't hope to constantly meddle in political affairs while maintaining it's image of an impartial arbitrator. The third was political, the catholic church was simply too centralized in an era where nation-states were forming and increasing in strength. The second is related to the first greater literacy resulting in more interpretations of the bible ,and the discovery that the Catholic church had actually deviated from the bible. After the plagues the religious and political elites tried to reassert their power creating massive discontent. The first was class-based, the bubonic plague wiped out a lot of labor increasing the importance & living standards of the survivors. Well it's not just theological, there were plenty of contributing factors. Without England, Protestantism has northern Germany and Scandinavia, and without English support the Austrians and French might succeed in crushing Protestantism in northern Germany, so there is no guarantee of success for Protestantism even after Luther lives his OTL life. If England doesn't have Henry VIII and his unique brand of crazy, there is no reason to assume that they would convert, since the reformation had done poorly in England up to that point. If Luther's doctrinal ideas had been preached without reform in mind, or in a time when reform wasn't a priority, he would probably have suffered a similar fate to that of the Cathars or Waldensians.Īs for whether Protestantism being a success is inevitable, even today only about 1/4 of Christians are Protestant. He preached reform and an almost entirely new religion simultaneously, and people wanted reform badly enough to try it, and found that it served their purposes well. Lutheranism is less of a reformation than a revolution, since to follow his doctrine you would essentially have to get rid of everything from the priesthood to the Papal States, and I think that its success is more a matter of lucky timing (from a thuroughly non-religious perspective anyway) than anything else. I think that a reform within the church, similar to what eventually happened with the counter-reformation (specifically weeding out corruption, founding orders to combat heresy, and halting offensive things like the sale of indulgences), was far more likely. I think that some sort of reformation was almost inevitable by 1400, but the fact that Martin Luther came up with new beliefs was not inevitable. In fact, England before Henry VIII wasn't even a stronghold of the reformation, and without Henry VIII it very well might have stayed Catholic indefinitely. Being that Luther was indirectly at least partially responsible for both of those, I'd say we probably would not have them.

Reformation thread up